


If it falls, it falls (can't say I didn't try)

by Recila (Flickering_Ember)



Series: The Aftermath, in brief [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Chief Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hiccup is Sad, I am why we can't have nice things, Post-How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, author is sad, in so far as THW is canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 05:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21368662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flickering_Ember/pseuds/Recila
Summary: The dragons are gone. Life is quiet.
Relationships: past Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless
Series: The Aftermath, in brief [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542433
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	If it falls, it falls (can't say I didn't try)

“I’m fine,” Hiccup says, for what must be the hundredth time today. It’s a good day. It is. It’s warmer here than on Berk, and there are more fish _less to be shared_ and the sheep are mostly safe. The woods have been just as mostly cleared; there are predators, there always will be _there are more now_ but they have largely learned to avoid New Berk, and New Berk has learned to avoid them. Hiccup is fine because New Berk is fine.

New Berk is great, even.

Yet people still insist on asking if he’s alright.

He _is_.

“Hiccup…” Gobber starts. The blacksmith hesitates. He was a confidante once; no more. Hiccup had shared a word too much and suddenly everyone was worried. “Yeh’ve been looking at the water again.”

“There was a ship coming back.” Hiccup’s eyes are focused on the back of the smithy. He’s too busy being chief to be a blacksmith again, but he remembers clearly where everything is stored, even now that there’s more space. Even now that it’s not being tossed into disarray every few minutes. Hiccup sees his sword in the back and something squeezes in his chest. It had needed to be straightened. He hadn’t taken it back yet. Gobber clearly kept it well polished. Was its stock of gas still full? Did the igniter still work? Would a dra-?

It doesn’t matter. Hiccup doesn’t use that blade anymore.

“If you say so, Hiccup,” Gobber says, clearly intending on informing everyone in Hiccup’s close circle about the incident.

Hiccup reaches forward, stops, and pulls back again. He was just passing by. He had just wanted to say hi, to check-in. Nothing else. “I’m _fine._”

“Sure yeh are.”

Hiccup shakes his head, shoves down a sigh, and keeps walking. Sheep. Paddock. Fencing. A bear had broken into the paddock _it wouldn’t have before_ and made off with sheep. Easy prey; now it has to go down, soon. Hiccup is part of the hunting party. He offers a goodbye, terser than he intends, and continues down the road. All around him, Berkians – New Berkians, now – are talking and walking and working. There is so much noise and more than a little chaos; Vikings will be Vikings, after all. Some things never change. _It will never be the same._ Most offer simple nods and a respectful “Chief” when Hiccup walks by. Hiccup returns the favor, by a nod or by name.

Every building is still standing, and there are no fights, and the bear had only taken an elderly sheep, too tough for slaughter, when it should have taken so many more. It is a good day, and it is peaceful.

Hiccup doesn’t stop at the paddock. The hunting party had already left; he can see signs of their passing, in grass flattened by trampling feet _all human all so very human _and the hastily rebuilt fence so no sheep can run off. A man is cutting wood, someone else is insisting they add stone reinforcement. Hiccup lets them bicker. He will come back later and evaluate the fence. For now, wood would do. So, he keeps walking.

And walking.

And walking.

There is a cliff looming over the ocean. Hiccup can feel his armor, the leather against his sides and a wing stretching to knock him over.

But there is no wing.

There is Hiccup and his fake wings, and the sky and ocean and a cliff so high and so unstable even a Viking would balk at going near the edge. Hiccup is leaning over it. The updraft is warm _so familiar_ that he can’t help but close his eyes to appreciate it more. It’s not a conscious thought. His arms loop through his flight suit and Hiccup is airborne. The updraft forces him up – up, up, up, just below the treetops then levels him out. He glides over the ocean and calls, but there is no answer. There will never _be_ another answer. Hiccup can’t help it though; he calls again, the half-song of the sea dragons, high-pitched keens and warbles and noises he should not be able to make – should not remember _how_ to make.

There is no answer.

Hiccup twists, forces himself into a sharp bank that would send anyone else spiraling – he’s been flying so long, so _very_ long that it’s not a thought of how to do it but just an instinct _leaning sharply pressing into black scales this is how he turns_ and Hiccup pulls up so he can grab onto the rock face. Below, far below, the cliff opens, and Hiccup lets himself fall a little more. Into the cliff.

There’s a pool with sand and grass poking through the rocks, so far into the cave that Hiccup has come back out again into sunlight.

Hiccup sits heavily on the grass, and it feels so familiar that he tears himself out of his flight suit and struggles to breathe. It was a good day, and the sky had been so blue and Hiccup hadn’t touched his suit since Toothless left but he was _stuck_. He screams at the open air, at the taunting blue sky – he calls it a flight suit but it isn’t the same, will never be never the same, and his heart snaps in two all over again as he shrieks into the empty, empty air. There’s no startled half-yelp, there’s no Night Fury knocking him over and pinning him down in confusion and worry and fear until Hiccup is focusing on him enough to breathe, there’s no flying, and he is _trapped_. So Hiccup screams and screams and screams, in this cove that isn’t _his_ cove, in this home that isn’t _his_ home, with people he loves but _can’t_ stay with, and with absolutely no one to hear him.

The screams crack and break and Hiccup’s voice is gone, but he keeps trying until he can taste copper in his throat and his screams turn to sobs. He shouldn’t be crying. Berk’s – New Berk’s – chief _can’t_ cry. But he’s not in New Berk, and he is not their chief. Not right now. Right now he is Hiccup and his best friend abandoned him. The air isn’t the same without him in it, Hiccup can feel that as keenly as he feels the difference in the absent dragon feeding stations and perches and friendly warbles. He cries out again, the Berk dragons’ own gathering call – _here! Come here, I’m here!_ – worked out over months and years, with his best friend and every other dragon on the island, and the only response Hiccup gets is waves crashing against rock. He tries one more time, tastes copper, and gives up. He has to go soon, back to a place that isn’t quite home and will always be just a little wrong in ways he cannot, will not, explain, but soon is not _now_.

He hasn’t admitted to anyone how much it hurts. It has been years, but Hiccup can’t stop himself from missing them. He still expects to be knocked over by an overeager Stormfly, or see Snotlout being pushed over by Hookfang. Hiccup will turn too fast and see a Terror in the corner of his vision, or think the shadow of a passing cloud is a Gronkle overhead, only to check and be disappointed.

Every day, Hiccup waits to see Toothless again.

Every day, Toothless fails to show.

Every day, it hurts a little bit more.

He knows their bond wasn’t one-sided. He and Toothless had risked life and limb for each other, again and again, and _again._ It’s as natural as breathing; the idea of Toothless _not being there_ was, is, wrong. He always was. And Hiccup was always there for him, too.

It’s bitterness that tells him perhaps all their trials didn’t mean so much to Toothless, and despair that remembers his best friend destroying his first automatic tailfin, simply because he hadn’t wanted to fly without Hiccup. And Hiccup hadn’t wanted to fly without him.

Even the wingsuit, something purely _his_, felt wrong without knowing Toothless was right behind him. Flying, something that had been his escape, had been _their_ escape was just another reminder of what Hiccup had lost. He remembers Toothless chasing after the Light Fury and wishes he could be happier. Hiccup _is_ happy. He is so happy Toothless found someone to love, overjoyed that Toothless was so clearly in love. But Toothless let him go so easily. Had forgotten him so quickly, even after just two days. Had left without even a moment’s hesitation to go to the Hidden World, and called his flock to go with, and not much later _all_ dragons had disappeared. He had left Hiccup to grasp at empty air to fill the void Toothless himself had left.

So Hiccup sits in the cove that was not his and Toothless’s until he can’t bear the weight of missing his best friend any longer. Hiccup keeps calling. He can’t help it. He doesn’t think he will ever _stop_ calling. Not for his best friend, not for their flock. He calls until his voice gives, and until his tears run dry. Then he dons his flight suit again, ice and stone twisting in his gut until Hiccup is relieved that he did not eat today (or yesterday, or…). He rides the updraft to the cliff, hides away his wings and tucks his grief in the folds of them, then begins the trek back. The sheep paddock has stone reinforcements. His people haven’t noticed he was gone, or at least not that he has come back hollower than before. Hiccup picks up the chief’s mantle like a second skin and resumes his day.

This is New Berk, and there are no dragons here.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm late to the party but The Hidden World left me feeling empty and it took weeks before I could find the words to explain why. It was a punch in the gut. Sure, there were some good moments, but there are only two that I can honestly say I enjoyed - when Hiccup was trying to help Toothless impress the Light Fury, and when Hiccup told her to save Toothless instead. That's it. Otherwise... I understand they were going for parallels. But all of those similar moments felt cheap and like desperate bids for nostalgia. No one had changed. THW spat on Toothless and Hiccup's bond and called it nothing, then told us we simply weren't good enough for dragons.  
A series that I had relied on for comfort now turned around and destroyed itself.  
As you might imagine, that was completely crushing.  
Did Gift of the Night Fury mean nothing? Did the first two movies cease existing?  
So here, several months later, I'm putting all that on poor Hiccup.  
These two were brothers in all but blood. I'm letting this boy grieve.  
And grieve.  
And grieve.
> 
> I'm contemplating a part two for Toothless because you can't have one without the other. And, well - I'm letting Hiccup grieve. Toothless should be able to, too. God knows the movie didn't bother with it.
> 
> Cheers, and be safe.


End file.
